Digital Bullet Hits: Creating A Squib Line

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This value-packed project-based tutorial teaches you how to use Lightwave’s particle system and HyperVoxel sprites to simulate bullets from a machine gun hitting the ground. Several techniques are used in building this scene including front projection mapping, controlling transparency with weight maps, adding and editing particle emitters, using collision objects to trigger particles, setting up hypervoxel sprites, converting curves to motion paths, and more.

While this project benefits greatly from Lightwave 10’s new VPR interactive renderer, the actual techniques used will work in earlier versions of Lightwave as well.

Project assets and scene files are included* for you to examine and play with. Also included is a .pdf with notes about the tutorial including a list of keyboard shortcuts used throughout the videos.
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Chapters:

01 – Introduction, Starting a New Project, & Building the Set

02 – Texturing the Set

03 – Setting Up the Squib Emitter

04 – Modeling the Bullet Path

05 – Setting Up the Main Squib Emitter and the Bullet Path

06 – Tweaking the HyperVoxel Settings for the Squib Emitter

07 – Adding Secondary Emitters

08 – Using a Collision Object as a Trigger

09 – Using Real Footage for Your Squib Shots

10 – Addendum: Alternate Squib Line Set Up & A Toon Version

This tutorial assumes a basic knowledge of the Lightwave interface, but if beginners watch carefully enough (and pause and rewind when necessary) they should be able to follow along. This video was made in Lightwave 10 but the techniques demonstrated can be used in earlier versions of Lightwave as well.

*the video clips used in video 09 are not provided due to licensing issues.